Orlando Fringe review: '9-11: We Will (Never) Forget'

Tod Caviness, Orlando Sentinel

The show starts before the announcements even begin, with bystander video of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The footage is so universally sobering that – for a while – you begin to be leery about the show’s intent. For all the title’s insistence to the contrary, the wounds of9/11are still raw enough to exploit.

No such worry. New Yorker Jason Nettle brings the pain in his one-man show, but he does so to no trivial effect. Switching between 17 characters in the wake (or the midst) of the attacks, he tackles loss, acceptance, prejudice and despair with a series of short but brutal snapshots. In each of his roles as a haunted cop, a grieving widower and a frazzled bartender, Nettle is distinct without being showy. By necessity, the emotion ratchets high – almost unbearably so, at points – but there are some welcome reprieves. (His vignette as a self-absorbed actor is one of Nettle’s most subtle turns, improbably hilarious.)

The biggest triumph, though, may be what the show doesn’t do: Preach. If you can’t already glean it from the emotional tidal wave of his previous characters, Nettle’s final monologue reveals this as a very personal show. If it’s a call to action, it is only in the deepest, most personal sense, as when one of his voices admires the ability of a mere 19 people to change the world – and seethes at their decision to create such tragedy. “When do we all get to believe in one thing?” he asks. It’s a question that lingers long after the lights go up.